on-room of the historical library at Florence, jealously guarded
beneath a glass case, is Napoleon's blue paper copybook, the very last
line of which reads, by the strangest of all strange coincidences,
"Saint Helena, a little island."

The boy's willingness to suffer for his friends, and, even more than
this, the unjust taking away of his office in the school battalion, of
which he was quite proud, turned the tide in young Napoleon's favor, so
far as his schoolmates were concerned.

"Little Straw-nose is a plucky one, is he not, though?" the boys
declared; and when he came on the field again, they welcomed him with
cheers, and made him leader for the day in their sports.

They had great fun. Napoleon, full of his readings in Plutarch's
"Lives," divided the boys into two camps; one camp was to be the
Persians, the other the Greeks and Macedonians. Napoleon, of course, was
Alexander; and, like the great Macedonian, he wrought such havoc on the
Persians, that the school hall in which the battle was waged was filled
with the uproar, and all the teachers at Brienne rushed pell-mell to the
place, to quell what they were certain must be a school riot, led on by
"that miserable Corsican."

Day by day, however, "that miserable Corsican" made more and more
friends among his schoolfellows. For boys grow tired at last of plaguing
one who has both spirit and pluck; and these Napoleon certainly
possessed. He had come to the school "a little savage," so the polished
French boys declared.

"I was in Brienne," he said years afterwards, as he thought over his
school-days, "the poorest of all my schoolfellows. They always had money
in their pockets; I, never. I was proud, and was most careful that
nobody should perceive this. I could neither laugh nor amuse myself like
the others. I was not one of them. I could not be popular."

[Illustration: _Napoleon at the School
of Brienne (From the Painting by M R Dumas_)]

So he had to go through the same hard training that other poor boys at
boarding-school have undergone. He, however was petulant, high-spirited,
proud, and had something of that Corsican love of retaliation that has
made that rocky island famous for its feuds and family rows, or
"vendettas" as they are called.

He showed the boys at last that they could not impose upon him; that
he had plenty of spirit; that he was kind-hearted to those who showed
themselves friendly; and, above all, that he was fitted to lead them in
t